2014 Arthur Koelle Tournament

2014 Champion: Patrick Cook

Patrick Cook wins Koelle 2014

The Koelle Tournaments, 'A' and 'B', are the Club's final Classical events for the year. Named in honour of Arthur Koelle, one of our strongest chess playing "sons", the idea for two separate tournaments came from John Abson. The inaugural events were played in 2011 and replaced the John Holmes Memorial.
The Koelle A is an 8 player round robin tournament, while the Koelle B can be either a round robin or a Swiss, depending on numbers. Happily, both events this year are round robin tournaments.

Congratulations to winners, Patrick Cook in A, and Bjorn Lategan in the B section!

Round 1

Patrick Cook faced his nemesis Jonathon Yates in a Queen’s Gambit Accepted. As is his wont, Jonathon “mixed it up” with sharp tactical play. When the smoke cleared, Patrick emerged a rook up, and Jonathon resigned.
Rob Bailey met Club Reserves Champion James Eyre in Rob’s favourite Sicilian Najdorf. An unusual position arose in the middle game, with White having 5 pieces aligned in a row in the middle of the board! The players castled on opposite wings and set about attacking each others Kings. White crashed through first to pick up the full point.
Rob Loveband versus Jamie Brotheridge was a Grunfeld Defence. An even struggle, neither side gained much from the opening phase, but Black eventually won a pawn in the middle game. A subsequent blunder handed the advantage to White and a difficult Rook and Pawns ending was reached. Rob worked hard and eventually prevailed after 80 moves at 1:30 in the morning!
The game of the round was undoubtedly Kevin Perrin versus Rod Jacobs. A 4 Knights opening, Kevin managed to keep the volatile Rod restrained for some time in a complex position. Rod eventually gained a piece for pawn and broke open the White King’s position. This unleashed a wild position full of unfathomable tactics, Rod even missed a mate in one (the 3rd time this has occurred in a Classical event this year!). Kevin was unable to cope and resigned in a hopeless position.
In the Koelle ‘B’ Chris Segrave was lucky to win against newcomer Maddie McKinley after being comprehensively outplayed in the game. Tom Oppenheim won without difficulty against Sasha Jacobs, Michael Schreenan went down to Anna Yates who is gaining in confidence, while Bjorn Lategan was defeated by junior Coen Johnson, who has returned to the Club after some time away.

Chris contemplates.

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Mr. Arthur Koelle was Victorian Junior champion in 1968 at 14, Country Victorian champion in the same year, and Club champion, also in 1968 as well as 1969. Most of these achievements are age records to this day! He went on to win the Australian Junior championship in 1971. Arthur has been living in Germany since 1982 and competed in the famous Bundesliga club competition, mixing it with experienced grandmasters, up until the mid-1990’s when work commitments became more pressing. Like the Club Championship, the A Grade is a round robin tournament restricted to 8 players, while the B Grade tournament format depends on the number of entries. The inaugural tournament was held in 2011.